Rethinking Accounting Professionalisation in China : A Study of the Development of the Chinese Public Accounting Profession since the “Reform and Opening-up”

This thesis is a study of the development of the Chinese public accounting profession since China launched the “Reform and Opening-up” policy in 1978. The current, established theoretical representations of accounting professionalisation in China are predominantly underpinned by Gramsci’s (1971) hegemony perspective. Such a hegemony perspective has led to a one-sided understanding of accounting professionalisation in China. It is one-sided in the sense that accounting professionalisation in China is treated as a predictable end in itself – i.e. depending on the focused and studied actor (e.g. the Chinese state or the Big Four), this very actor is set to achieve and retain dominance over the process of accounting professionalisation in China. This thesis argues that such a one-sided understanding is overly simplistic because it presumes that other actors are fully aware of how power operates but consciously choose to go along with it.The aim of this thesis is to nuance the hegemony representations of accounting professionalisation in China. Drawing on previously unaccessed archive materials and a series of interviews with representatives of the Chinese public accounting profession, this thesis examines the interactions between key domestic and international actors involved in and the impact of such interactions on the process of accounting professionalisation in China over time. This thesis demonstrates that, through interactions, actors collectively construct an evolving consensus on the institutional arrangements that are central to two key aspects of accounting professionalisation in China: the organisation of the professional domain and the practice of professionals within the professional domain. In contrast to the hegemony representations, neither the Chinese state nor the Big Four were found to be fully capable of dominating the process of accounting professionalisation in China. The process is more complicated than that recognised in prior studies, involving ongoing interactions between the Chinese state, the Big Four and other actors including, most significantly, the CICPA. The interactions between these actors are also relevant for the identity construction of individual practitioners. In doing so, this thesis provides more nuanced insights that help to deepen our understanding of accounting professionalisation in China

Dynamic Studies of Scaffold-dependent Mating Pathway in Yeast

The mating pathway in \emph{Saccharomyces cerevisiae} is one of the best understood signal transduction pathways in eukaryotes. It transmits the mating signal from plasma membrane into the nucleus through the G-protein coupled receptor and the mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) cascade. According to the current understandings of the mating pathway, we construct a system of ordinary differential equations to describe the process. Our model is consistent with a wide range of experiments, indicating that it captures some main characteristics of the signal transduction along the pathway. Investigation with the model reveals that the shuttling of the scaffold protein and the dephosphorylation of kinases involved in the MAPK cascade cooperate to regulate the response upon pheromone induction and to help preserving the fidelity of the mating signaling. We explored factors affecting the dose-response curves of this pathway and found that both negative feedback and concentrations of the proteins involved in the MAPK cascade play crucial role. Contrary to some other MAPK systems where signaling sensitivity is being amplified successively along the cascade, here the mating signal is transmitted through the cascade in an almost linear fashion.Comment: 36 pages, 9 figure

Efficient estimation of binding free energies between peptides and an MHC class II molecule using coarse‐grained molecular dynamics simulations with a weighted histogram analysis method

Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/137767/1/jcc24845.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/137767/2/jcc24845_am.pd

Lowpass Filtering of Rate-Distortion Functions for Quality Smoothing in Real-Time Video Communication

Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TCSVT.2005.852417In variable-bit-rate (VBR) video coding, the video is pre-processed to collect sequence-level statistics, which are used for global bit allocation in the actual encoding stage to obtain a smoothed video presentation quality. However, in real-time video recording and network streaming, this type of two-pass encoding scheme is not allowed because the access to future frames and global statistics is not available. To address this issue, we introduce the concept of low-pass filtering of rate-distortion (R-D) functions and develop a smoothed rate control (SRC) framework for real-time video recording and streaming. Theoretically, we prove that, using a geometric averaging filter, the SRC algorithm is able to maintain a smoothed video presentation quality while achieving the target bit rate automatically. We also analyze the buffer requirement of the SRC algorithm in real-time video streaming, and propose a scheme to seamlessly integrate robust buffer control into the SRC framework. The proposed SRC algorithm has very low computational complexity and implementation cost. Our extensive experimental results demonstrate that the SRC algorithm significantly reduces the picture quality variation in the encoded video clips

An unsupervised machine learning method for assessing quality of tandem mass spectra

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>In a single proteomic project, tandem mass spectrometers can produce hundreds of millions of tandem mass spectra. However, majority of tandem mass spectra are of poor quality, it wastes time to search them for peptides. Therefore, the quality assessment (before database search) is very useful in the pipeline of protein identification via tandem mass spectra, especially on the reduction of searching time and the decrease of false identifications. Most existing methods for quality assessment are supervised machine learning methods based on a number of features which describe the quality of tandem mass spectra. These methods need the training datasets with knowing the quality of all spectra, which are usually unavailable for the new datasets.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>This study proposes an unsupervised machine learning method for quality assessment of tandem mass spectra without any training dataset. This proposed method estimates the conditional probabilities of spectra being high quality from the quality assessments based on individual features. The probabilities are estimated through a constraint optimization problem. An efficient algorithm is developed to solve the constraint optimization problem and is proved to be convergent. Experimental results on two datasets illustrate that if we search only tandem spectra with the high quality determined by the proposed method, we can save about 56 % and 62% of database searching time while losing only a small amount of high-quality spectra.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Results indicate that the proposed method has a good performance for the quality assessment of tandem mass spectra and the way we estimate the conditional probabilities is effective.</p

Carbon dots for specific “off-on” sensing of Co\u3csup\u3e2+\u3c/sup\u3e and EDTA for in vivo bioimaging

Fluorescent carbon dots (CDs) were hydrothermally synthesized from a mixture of frozen tofu, ethylenediamine and phosphoric acid in an efficient 64% yield. The resulting CDs exhibit good water solubility, low cytotoxicity, high stability, and excellent biocompatibility. The CDs selectively and sensitively detect Co2+ through fluorescent quenching with a detection limit of 58 nM. Fluorescence can be restored through the introduction of EDTA, and this phenomenon can be used to quantify EDTA in solution with a detection limit of 98 nM. As both analytes are detected by the same CD platform, this is an “off-on” fluorescence sensor for Co2+ and EDTA. The technique\u27s robustness for real-world samples was illustrated by quantifying cobalt in tap water and EDTA in contact lens solution. The CDs were also evaluated for in vivo imaging as they show low cytotoxicity and excellent cellular uptake. In a zebrafish model, the CDs are rapidly adsorbed from the intestine into the liver, and are essentially cleared from the body in 24 h with no appreciable bioaccumulation. Their simple and efficient synthesis, combined with excellent physical and chemical performance, renders these CDs attractive candidates for theranostic applications in targeted “smart” drug delivery and bioimaging

Acid-Triggered Self-Assembled Egg White Protein-Coated Gold Nanoclusters for Selective Fluorescent Detection of Fe\u3csup\u3e3+\u3c/sup\u3e, NO2\u3csup\u3e-\u3c/sup\u3e, and Cysteine

Herein, we present a simple and economical synthesis for the first multianalyte probe able to selectively quantify the concentrations of Fe3+, NO2-, and cysteine. It comprises H+-triggered self-assembled gold nanoclusters (AuNCs@EW/H+, AuEHs), showing enhanced red fluorescence at 640 nm. The AuEH is a good fluorescent nanosensor for Fe3+ and NO2- with detection limits of 1.40 and 2.82 nM, respectively. Iron detection, through fluorescence quenching, occurs because of nanocluster aggregation elicited by the complexation of Fe3+ with amino acids on the surface of AuEH; nitrite detection likely proceeds through fluorescence quenching via the disassembly of the nanoclusters following irreversible oxidation by nitrite. This selectivity is good enough that it can be used to quantify the nitrite concentration in commercially available processed meat. Cysteine detection occurs through the restoration of fluorescence of iron-quenched samples; similar molecules including homocysteine and glutathione are unable to restore fluorescence, showing the specificity of the interaction. Applications, including as a detecting ink and as a biocompatible probe, show promise because of the lack of observable toxicity of the AuEHs, demonstrating their promise as specific and sensitive biosensors

Detecting Abrupt Change of Channel Covariance Matrix in IRS-Assisted Communication

The knowledge of channel covariance matrices is crucial to the design of intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) assisted communication. However, channel covariance matrices may change suddenly in practice. This letter focuses on the detection of the above change in IRS-assisted communication. Specifically, we consider the uplink communication system consisting of a single-antenna user (UE), an IRS, and a multi-antenna base station (BS). We first categorize two types of channel covariance matrix changes based on their impact on system design: Type I change, which denotes the change in the BS receive covariance matrix, and Type II change, which denotes the change in the IRS transmit/receive covariance matrix. Secondly, a powerful method is proposed to detect whether a Type I change occurs, a Type II change occurs, or no change occurs. The effectiveness of our proposed scheme is verified by numerical results.Comment: accepted by IEEE Wireless Communications Letter

User eXperience in educational eXtended Reality applications in the Cultural Heritage domain

With the increasing prevalence of educational eXtended Reality (XR) Cultural Heritage (CH) experiences, it becomes increasingly important to understand the user, and learner, experience of such installations and develop bespoke methodologies to capture and evaluate these experiences. Our work aims to expand the existing knowledge of User Experience (UX) in CH incorporating XR, especially for educational aspects inside, by displaying and analysing UX understanding and evaluation methods. Through investigation and research on UX work of applications described from various sources, this paper summarises the current trends, limitations, and challenges of UX evaluation in this field and represents the direction of future work